


Mixed Messages

by AwkwardAnnie



Series: Errata and Addenda [2]
Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, communication issues, relationship drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-21
Updated: 2012-11-21
Packaged: 2017-11-19 05:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/569778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardAnnie/pseuds/AwkwardAnnie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raffles and I disagree on many points, one of which being how often it is appropriate to tell a fellow that you love him quite beyond reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mixed Messages

I intimated at the end of my last account that there were many more stories of my long-standing companionship with A. J. Raffles still to tell, and this is but one of them. I am not entirely certain why it is that I feel the need to pick up my pen and write again of our life together, for as I have said, these most intimate tales are hardly fit for public consumption, but I hope that if these various errata and addenda are ever published in some far-flung and more caring future, they might bring new light and new perspectives to the story of the brilliant man whose life, of his own volition, he chose to spend with me.

All relationships have their trials and their tribulations, and ours was, and is, no exception, but my friend is a great believer in the adage that whatever does not kill only strengthens and while I remain sceptical of the overall virtue of the statement I believe that in this case it is not only apt, but true. So, I present an account of one of the more taxing of those trials, how it came to be, and how it was conquered as so many have been since.

 (And please, my dear AJ, if you are still reading these manuscripts, I must insist that this time you replace the pages in the right order; I had a devil of a time sorting out the mess you made of the first one.)

* * *

It began, as these things often do, with an argument.

At the time, Raffles and I had pursued our unconventional courtship, if I may term it that, for a little over a month. It was a wild and tumultuous time for me, for I had been in love but once before, and while I had loved the lady well, and was well loved in return, the soft brush of her lips under the boughs of a blossoming tree was as nothing to the searing kisses Raffles pressed on me in the darkness of an empty house as the clock ticked steadily towards discovery. He loved the danger of it, the possibility of utter ruin should we ever make a mistake, and I loved him. I loved him, and I told him this every morning when we arose, or over breakfast if we had spent the night apart. I told him in dark houses and in light ones, although always quietly. I told him as we dressed, as we shaved, as we undressed again. I gasped the words in his ear in the deepest watches of the night, and when I could no longer speak I wrote them with my fingertips and my teeth and my lips across his shoulders and down his arms so that he would never forget.

In return, he told me nothing.

That is not to say that he said nothing, for he said a great deal. He praised my efforts when we worked, ineffectual though they may have been. He complemented my hair, my eyes or the particular suit I’d worn that day. He called me his dear boy, his lad, his rabbit, and each time the possessive pronoun sparked warmth deep in my heart. But he never told me he loved me, not once. At first I hardly cared. He kissed me, he made love to me, and for a while that was enough. But after a month of silence where it mattered most to me, I had begun to wonder.

The night our story takes place, I was seated in Raffles’ chambers at the Albany trying to read. I say ‘trying’ because what I was in actuality doing was waiting, while attempting at the same time to pretend that I wasn’t. Raffles had gone out shortly after nine that evening to run reconnaissance on a house in Kensington where currently resided a young lady, her aged maiden aunt and a priceless collection of pearl necklaces. I had, as usual, begged and pleaded to be allowed to accompany him, and as usual had been shot down in short order. He had gone on to instruct me categorically not to wait up for him.

“I’ll know if you do, my boy,” he had said with a wink as he stepped out the door. At first, I had thought myself only too happy to oblige but as the night wore on and he did not reappear I became increasingly worried. It was, I know, an irrational fear, for he had done this many times before and never failed to return to me no matter how much I fretted, and yet I could not bring myself to sleep lest I wake up and find him gone forever. So, I settled myself in an armchair with a glass of brandy, a book and the plan to tell him that I had indeed intended to go to bed but had become caught up in the story and couldn’t wait until the morning to finish it. It sounded a weak excuse even to my ears but the alternative was too terrible to contemplate. It had even worked for a while, for the characters were interesting and the plot engaging if a trifle cliché. But then the plucky young heroine, who had spent the previous chapters attempting to win the affections of the strapping hero and who, it seemed, had finally succeeded in her efforts, exclaimed to her wise if old-fashioned former nurse that ‘he claims to love me, but oh, I just don’t know if I believe it!’, and I found myself absolutely unable to continue.

A fictional character’s plight having hit rather too close to home for my comfort, I was reduced to merely staring blankly at the pages while my mind concocted image after horrible image of what could have befallen Raffles on the dark streets of London. I heard the clocks chime midnight, then the first quarter, then the second, but before they could reach the third, tiredness had overcome (or perhaps joined forces with) my crushing paranoia and I fell into a fitful sleep filled with visions of my dearest friend running from grey, inhuman beings with vengeance in their eyes and guns in their claws...

I was awakened abruptly by the slam of the door, and there stood Raffles in his second-best suit, scowling fiercely. The sudden rush of intense relief that he had returned unscathed was tempered severely by the frightful expression on his face.

"Four hours of my life I shan't get back," he declared loudly to no-one in particular. "The lady's brother was taken ill this morning and she and the aunt are both jumping ship to Cumbria tomorrow. The house is crawling with staff moving all the household belongings and the necklaces are guarded like the crown jewels. Absolutely hopeless. Oh, Bunny, I told you not to wait up!" This last sentence was delivered as he seemed almost to spot me for the first time, although he surely must have noticed me as soon as he entered. I mumbled a garbled version of my prepared piece about getting caught up in my novel but it was clear from the beginning that Raffles wasn't having any of it.

"Honestly, Bunny," he said sharply. "It's as if you don't trust me to be able to walk down the road and look at a house."

"Hardly that!" I exclaimed. "But you don't just look, do you? You sneak and peer and try the door handles and I worry, AJ, I really do."

"Well, don't. It's both unnecessary and extremely tiresome."

This is the point where, had I not been both exhausted and stricken with worry, I would have recognised that Raffles was in the foulest of foul moods and was merely flinging barbs where he could. Unfortunately it was not to be, and I rose from my seat in my excitement.

"What on earth do you expect me to do?" I demanded of him. "How can I sleep knowing that you could be in danger of arrest or, God forbid, even worse? For pity's sake, AJ, I love you!"

"So you tell me," he spat. "Frequently and at length, and that too is becoming tiresome."

My knees buckled; I believe that if the arm of the chair hadn’t been directly behind me I should have collapsed at his feet. In an instant my heart was a battleground between despair and a righteous anger–how dare he, after all that I had sacrificed and all I had risked for him! Somehow I managed to keep my voice level when I finally replied, though it was not without considerable effort.

"Then I am sorry that you do not care for the sentiment."

The man actually had the gall to roll his eyes at me.

"I don't mind the sentiment, merely the annoying manner in which you choose to express it; _I_ don't feel the need to tell you that I love you every waking moment of every day."

"I wonder why that might be!"

I have said many cruel things to Raffles over the years, some deserved and others less so, for our relationship, as I have said, has not been without trial, but I don’t believe I have ever seen him so wounded by my words as he appeared at that moment; the transition from exasperation was sudden and horrifying. Looking back on it I retain a deep sense of shame that anything I said could have hurt him so, though at the time I scarcely noticed, so incensed was I by his dismissal of my affection.

"Surely you can't think it's because I don't love you?” he asked, his voice soft and pleading. “Because I do, Bunny, I do!"

"Then that is news to me!" I cried, and I strode straight past him into the bedroom and slammed the door viciously behind me.

It was not my finest moment. It was, after all, Raffles' bedroom, rendering escape impossible so that sooner or later I would have to concede the point and leave with as much of my dignity preserved as I could, but all I could think at the time was that I never wished to set eyes on my friend ever again. I slid limply down the door until I was sat on the floor with tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. I had thought that, after all the time we had spent together, I might finally understand the man I had come to cherish, but now I found I knew him even less than before.

There was a quiet knock on the door behind me. I ignored it. It came again shortly thereafter, and I persisted in my silence. Finally, Raffles' voice came through the wood.

"Bunny, open the door."

Once more I declined to answer. After a moment there was a scuffling from behind the door, then a thump against it; I deduced that Raffles had sat down on the floor with his back to the door, much like myself only in a rather more controlled manner. That was bad news, because it meant that he had no intention of leaving me be, and I had equally no intention to explain myself to him.

“Go away.” I sounded like a petulant child, but I didn’t care.

“No.”

“Please.”

There was a long and terrible silence from the other side of the door. When Raffles finally spoke, his voice was so soft that I had to strain to hear it.

“Did you really think I didn’t love you?”

"What did you expect? You never said anything!" In a rush, it all came pouring out of me. It was a thousand times easier than saying it to his face; there was a sort of catharsis in it, and I began to appreciate why religious types made a habit of going to confession. "I thought you might have finally realised that I'm utterly hopeless at, well, most things. My cricketing is subpar, my acting is worse, I can't pick a lock to save my life—or yours, for that matter—I thought perhaps the only reason you hadn't simply told me to take my effects and leave was that you still needed a spare pair of hands."

“Why didn’t you say anything?” said my friend after several seconds of grim introspection on my side of the door, and his voice had almost recovered the exasperated tone he used so often with me

“I thought... I thought that if you really cared nothing for me, and you knew that I knew that, the game would be up and you’d leave altogether.” The wood of the door was smooth under my fingertips. I wondered if by spreading my fingers and pressing my palm to the grain I might feel the warmth of my dearest through the oak. "I’d have preferred to live a lie with you than the truth alone. You’re the only reason I'm still alive in the first place; I don't think I could manage at all without you."

There was another long silence, during which I contemplated whether to attempt an exit over the roof. Then Raffles spoke again, and escape seemed meaningless.

"I should make a confession, Bunny, if I may."

"Make it. I'm hardly going anywhere."

"You may not like it."

My heart froze in my chest at that, but I refused to let my voice betray me. "I don't care. Make it and I will listen."

"You were right, about the sneaking and the peering and the trying of door-handles. You remember the house on Parks Road? The huge rambling monstrosity with the gargoyles on the gateposts?" I did. "Well, last week, the night I went out to fence the Cornwall diamonds, I was strolling back past those gates just in time to see the master of the house and his lovely wife climbing into a four-wheeler bound for a party in Islington. You know me, I've always been a man to play a good ball when it’s bowled at me, and here was a beauty of one headed straight for the flat of my bat. I slipped in over the wall at the back without a problem and watched the servants leaving for a night off. It was perfect, absolutely perfect. A crook couldn't wish for a better stage on which to perform his art. How far do you think I managed to get, Bunny?"

"I should be surprised if you couldn't at least get into the drawing room."

"Try again."

"The bedrooms?"

"Again."

"Surely you didn't manage to crack the man's desk drawers, you'd have told–"

"The scullery."

I was now heartily confused. "The scullery? Heavens, you didn't meet the butler, did you? This is exactly what I meant when I said that I worry!"

"I didn't meet anyone." I wished I could see Raffles' face; his voice gave precious few clues as to his meaning. "I couldn't go on."

"I don't follow."

"I couldn't do it. Not without you."

"You needed help with the locks?"

"No! Honestly, Bunny, you _are_ hopeless at times. I mean I got the blasted scullery door open, lit a match, reached back for your hand and you weren't there."

"Of course I wasn't, because as ever I was sat in your armchair waiting for—oh." Finally I understood, and my heart felt fit to burst. “Oh, AJ.”

“It’s a trifle pathetic,” said Raffles somewhat sheepishly, “but it looks like I can’t manage without you either, my boy.”

“You never said–” I started.

“I thought it was obvious,” he interrupted. “You don’t think I do this sort of thing for a lark, do you?”

“If you did, I can’t imagine why you’d want to do it with me.”

“Oh, don’t talk rot, Bunny. I won’t have any of this self-deprecating nonsense. Can I open this confounded door yet?”

“Not yet, not yet!” There was one more thing I still had to ask, and I was still too much of a coward to say it to his face. “Would you say it? Please? Just once, and I promise I shan’t ask again.”

The silence which followed this humble request was the heaviest yet. Then I fancied I heard him take a breath.

“I love you, and I’m sorry I don’t say it more often. I’m not desperately good at it, you see. You may feel free to complain about my unseemly hours, or my cricketing metaphors, or my frankly beastly habit of never telling you the whole plan until it’s too late, but please, my dear, dear boy, don’t ask me to prove that I love you, because I don’t know what more I can do.”

For some moments I didn’t respond. Then, somewhat stiffly thanks to my awkward position, I stood up and opened the door. Raffles looked up from the floor with an expression of slight surprise, and I spied dampness on his cheeks. That moment was the closest I have ever come to seeing my friend cry, though I am ashamed to admit he has seen me weep more than once. I extended a hand and pulled him to his feet, and he embraced me immediately with a fierceness which almost scared me.

“I love you,” he said earnestly, and I bit back the instinct to respond in kind.

“I know,” I said instead, and trusted that he would understand.

“I love you,” he repeated, and he kissed me like he’d never kissed me before, until I was dizzy and gasping for breath. “I love you.”

In all the years I have known Raffles in what one might call the Biblical sense, our lovemaking has never been especially gentle. My friend, as I have mentioned before, enjoys the strategic application of teeth in the midst of passion, and while I indulge his particular whims enthusiastically, when it comes to my own I prefer a strong touch, a sharp voice and a certain degree of manhandling, all of which Raffles is more than happy to provide. But when he took me to bed that night, he held me as tenderly as a maiden and kissed me slowly and softly, punctuating each kiss and each touch with the three words I’d waited a month and a lifetime to hear, and each time I told him that I knew, because I did, finally and without question. 

* * *

 

It is still not perfect, but few things are. Sometimes I tell him five times in less than an hour, and he gives me a look like one gives a puppy that keeps nipping at one’s heels, but which is too endearing to discipline. Sometimes days pass and he says nothing, and a treacherous voice at the back of my mind whispers that perhaps he has finally decided he no longer cares. But then I apologise and hold my tongue, or he drifts up behind me while I am at my desk and, wrapping his arms around my shoulders, kisses my neck and whispers the words in my ear, and slowly but surely the balance is restored. It becomes less of an issue every year, and perhaps one day when we are old men and the trials of youth are just a distant memory we will reach that delicate equilibrium where all is equal and proper and there are no secrets any more. 

I am sorry, AJ (for I know now that you still read these papers), if I appear at times too needy or too desperate for your affection, but I fear all the time that you will awake one morning, look over to the man who shares your bed and find him to be really quite ordinary and uninteresting after all, and regret all the years he has stolen from you to hoard in his writings like some great literary wyrm. I am sorry that sometimes I don’t believe you when you say that you care about me more than all the trinkets and baubles in the world, for it still seems a ludicrous idea. Most of all, I am sorry that I cannot give to you everything that you deserve and desire, but for all my love and all my trust I am only a man and cannot do the work of angels.

I fancy I can predict what you are saying to the emptiness of my study right now, and I hope you will not think it too gauche of me to say:

I know, my darling. _I know._


End file.
